What the Hell Were We? (Tell Me We Weren't Just Friends)
by caspeter
Summary: With Riley and Maya isolating themselves from the group, the last thing he needed was to freak out the one person he had left. The idea hadn't crossed his mind that maybe Farkle was worried about the same thing.


**A/N: i wrote this during my literature class instead of writing the sherlock holmes story i'm supposed to be writing for my assessment. go me. anyhow, there isn't enough larkle content in the fandom and it kills me so here we go!**

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Riley and Maya had fallen into each other's arms at the beginning of their Junior year, to nobody's surprise. Cory and Topanga had received the news well - though both of them had, on some level, been expecting it. Lucas was just glad he could sit in the bay window without having to worry about being chased down the fire escape like usual.

All in all, as far as Maya and Riley knew, nothing had changed.

But it had, and as time went by it became all the more obvious.

Lucas remembered the time the girls first told him about their relationship. Riley's voice had been soft and almost unsure, like she was trying to tell a small child or an overly temperamental person bad news. On some level, he'd expected to feel heartbroken or even just a little disappointed that whatever had been going on between himself and Riley would never come to anything.

But he hadn't. He'd found himself offering them a smile - a genuine one, and feeling nothing but happiness for the two.

He couldn't be sure, but he was fairly certain that telling Farkle had probably gone similarly.

That was at first. But then time passed, and Riley and Maya seemed to become more and more wrapped up in one another.

They spent more time together in the bay window than with Lucas and Farkle down at Topanga's, and the spaces between the four of them in classes suddenly seemed monumental in a way it hadn't before.

So Lucas found himself spending more time around Farkle. They were best friends, of course, had been ever since middle school, but they'd taken to spending less time with just the two of them and more time in a group as the years had gone by. But, the more Riley and Maya were seemingly distancing themselves from the two of them, and the more they hung around one another, the more Lucas remembered why he'd stopped spending time with Farkle alone in the first place.

His stupid crush from after he'd gotten to know Farkle returned with a vengeance, but he was content to ignore it - or so he told himself. With Riley and Maya isolating themselves from the group, the last thing he needed was to freak out the one person he had left.

The idea hadn't crossed his mind that maybe Farkle was worried about the same thing.

"Lucas?" They'd been sat in Lucas' room, Farkle having made himself at home on his friend's bed, and Lucas sat on the floor, both with textbooks sprawled out in front of them as they made some attempt at getting their Science homework done. (Also known as, Farkle finished within the first few minutes and spent the next half hour attempting to explain to Lucas the differences between DNA and RNA.)

"Hm?" He raised his head from where he was looking at the textbook to look over at his best friend. The room was silent for a moment as he waited for Farkle to say whatever it was he had to say.

"Would it make me a bad person to say I wish Riley and Maya didn't end up together?"

Farkle's voice was quiet, unusually sober for the usually loud and sometimes obnoxious boy, and Lucas frowned, their feelings toward the Rilaya relationship had only really been a topic that they'd only ever spoken about briefly, about how they were surprised they themselves weren't more upset about the girls they were supposed to like liking each other or about how they were happy for them or occasionally how they wished the girls' relationship didn't mean they had to be losing two of their best friends.

But never had either of them wished - at least vocally, that Riley and Maya hadn't realised their feelings went past friendship.

"Why would you want that?"

The room went quiet again, and Lucas braced himself for the oncoming confession that Farkle had feelings for one of them - for the reminder that he'd never end up finding with Farkle what Riley and Maya had found with each other.

"I just miss them." Farkle smiled sadly at Lucas, who nodded understandingly.

"I know you do, buddy." Lucas shoved his pen into the crease of the book as an ersatz bookmark, slamming the textbook shut and tossing it carelessly to the side so he could talk to Farkle properly. "But they'll come around. They're just in the honeymoon period or something like that, ya know? Everything's perfect for them." Though the doubt was evident in Lucas' voice, and he wasn't sure whether he was trying to convince Farkle or himself.

"We wouldn't have done it to them." Farkle mumbled, his tone having turned slightly bitter, and Lucas wasn't sure what he was getting at, but he also wasn't so sure that he liked seeing the usually cheerful and light hearted boy acting so down. He stood and made his way over to where Farkle was, pushing the books off the bed (ignoring Farkle's protests at his treatment of the rather expensive textbooks) and sat himself down next to him.

"What do you mean?"

Farkle sighed,

"Well..." He paused for a moment, struggling to find a way to continue that didn't sound too strange. "If it was us, and not them, we wouldn't be ignoring them."

Lucas froze, the last thing he wanted to be thinking about was the crush he'd been trying to repress for the last two years. He didn't need to be thinking about what it would be like if they were in Riley and Maya's positions.

It seemed he'd been quiet for a moment too long, as the next thing he knew, Farkle was shaking his head and chuckling nervously under his breath, staring at the ground as though it was suddenly the most interesting thing in the room.

"Never mind. Doesn't matter. It isn't us so I suppose it doesn't matter."

It was clearly an attempt to let the topic drop once and for all, but for some reason Lucas felt like a line had been crossed that they couldn't turn back from, and he couldn't stop himself from saying his next few words.

"Well, why isn't it? Why isn't it us?"

He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth, and Farkle's head snapped up, eyes wide and expression completely unreadable.

Lucas held his breath as he waited for Farkle's response, but it seemed as though he'd rendered him - for possibly the first time since he'd met him - completely speechless. So, knowing there was no going back, he decided to keep going.

"I mean, we're always around each other. And I... I like you." Once Lucas was started the words were falling out of his mouth without his permission, and he couldn't find a way to stop. "And-and I mean, I ignored it for ages because obviously you liked Maya or Riley or something but, well, but then when Riley and Maya started dating and you weren't all that upset I thought that maybe there might've been some kind of hope, but maybe I was wrong. But maybe I wasn't. Was I?"

He took a deep breath in once he'd finished his mini ramble almost turned rant, and waited with bated breath for Farkle to say something - _anything_. Even if it was a rejection. Even if he yelled at him for being creepy or ruining their friendship. Anything at all would be better than this sudden anxiety inducing silence that had fallen over them.

But, Farkle remained frozen. Under any other circumstance, Lucas would have been laughing his head off at the dumbfounded expression on Farkle's face and his apparent inability to do anything but gape like an open mouthed fish.

A few moments passed, even though it felt like an eternity for Lucas, and his heart sank when he realised Farkle had no intentions of saying anything. He'd been wrong, there was nothing between them, and now he had nobody at all.

In the space of a few months he'd gone from having three best friends to having none.  
"Nevermind." He muttered, voice barely audible. "I shouldn't've said anything." Suddenly, he wished he'd asked Farkle if they could've worked at his place, because then, at least, he could've made some half-assed excuse that wouldn't have been even slightly convincing and gotten up and left the awkward situation.

Suddenly, he felt the pressure of a cool hand being laid on his shoulder, and turned his head to face Farkle in surprise, waiting for the pity, or the gentle let down. But, instead, Farkle began leaning in at an agonizingly slow rate.

Lucas found his heartbeat was still racing, but the anxiety that caused it had been replaced with a fluttery feeling in his stomach and the fact that he could feel Farkle's slow, shaky breaths on his skin from just how close their faces had gotten. "Lucas?" The smaller boy whispered, somewhat nervously, when their lips were only centimeters apart.

"You weren't wrong." And then Farkle's lips were on his, and they were soft and moving ever so gently against his, and Lucas' hand came up to rest on his friend's arm as he came to his senses, kissing Farkle back properly, and their kissing grew slightly more heated, but still relatively soft and innocent.

They broke apart after a few moments, and Lucas only just managed to stop himself letting out an audible whine at the loss, Farkle resting his forehead against Lucas'. They spent a few seconds - maybe a minute like that, just there, on Lucas' bed, too wrapped up in one another to care about anything else, books long forgotten on the ground.

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 **A/N: yes look it's me again i know i'm annoying but basically i might eventually get around to writing another chapter, but if i never do, this is written so that it can be read as complete as a oneshot.**


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